Friday night on the Rod Laver Arena was about the closest Roger Federer will ever get to being Jimmy Connors. He was effing (someone said that the Swiss swearing was like a unicorn giving you the finger), spewing at the umpire, indulging in some mild trash-talking, and generally looking as bloody-minded on court as he as in a long time. For calm and control in the white heat of a slam, you had to turn to the man on the other side of the net. As Federer has said, it seems that Murray is more at peace with himself. Murray didn’t panic after losing the second set on a tiebreak (it was the first set he had lost all tournament) and he also didn’t panic when he failed to serve out the match at 6-5 in the fourth set, and then lost another breaker. The fifth set contained some of his best tennis of the match. His reward was his first victory against Federer at the slams, no small moment (or four hours of moments packaged together). If Murray can play with the same composure on Sunday that he did during his victory over Federer, he will give himself every chance of holding up the Norman Brookes Trophy.

1. Another Murray landmark. Murray has won a Grand Slam title as well as an Olympic gold medal in the past several months. Yet you could make the case that Friday marked Murray's third breakthrough performance.

In five tremendously entertaining and hard-fought sets, Murray beat Federer for the first time in four attempts at a major with an effort that combined exquisite tennis with exquisite composure. He stepped to the baseline and served ace after ace, 21 to Federer's five, winning dozens of quick-and-easy points. He outplayed his opponent from the baseline, unleashing defense that was downright Djokovician, making Federer play extra balls. He volleyed, he sliced, he teed off on returns, he changed pace and, as always, made few tactical mistakes. He kept his poise under the most tense circumstances imaginable (see below).

For the first time all tournament, Murray dropped a set. But, in outlasting Federer in a five-set classic, Murray recorded one of the true signature wins of his career."Maybe there's just a little bit more belief, or he's a bit more calm overall," Federer said. "It seems like he has more peace when he plays out there, and in the process he has better results."

Good quote. This is definitely a watershed, and no matter how things pan out on Sunday, and there's every reason to realistically expect Andy to deliver the goods, it will have been a good tournament for the Iron Man. ( Andrew Castles nickname for Andy, but worth promoting)

Andy Murray did not just beat Roger Federer for the first time in Grand Slam play at the Australian Open on Friday, the Scot's relentless onslaught made the King of Cool lose his cool.

The regal Federer, whose grace and skill has dazzled the sport for a golden decade in which he has won 17 Grand Slam titles, rarely appears ruffled by anything but on Friday, in the heat of battle, his mask slipped.

Struggling to live with Murray's power and unable to punch through the Briton's granite-like defences, the 31-year-old Federer fought like a cornered rat to force a riveting contest into a fifth set.

Throughout the four-hour semi-final Murray showed scant regard for his opponent's reputation, engaging the Swiss maestro in the kind of close-quarters combat that left little room for the decorum and reverence often accompanying Federer matches.

Early on as Murray dominated BBC commentator Andrew Castle was forced to apologise on behalf of the Swiss for an F-word tirade and when Murray served for the match at 6-5 in the fourth Federer uttered some choice words in his direction.

Murray's nonchalant smirk across the net was followed not long after by a drilled forehand aimed directly at the body of Federer - a tactic once the preferred choice of Murray's poker-faced coach Ivan Lendl.

There was a palpable tension between the two players who one imagines, unlike Murray and Novak Djokovic or Federer and Rafa Nadal, are unlikely to be future drinking buddies.

"Stuff like that happens daily in tennis matches," Murray said when quizzed by British reporters.

"The stuff that people say on football pitches and in basketball and all sorts of sports, I mean, it was very, very mild in comparison to what happens in other sports.

"It's just one of those things."

While playing down the incident, the fact that Murray clearly got under Federer's skin during the match, then withstood a ferocious response from him to come out on top, will be stored away in the Scot's memory bank.

Federer gave everything he could on the Rod Laver Arena, both mentally and physically, but still came up short against a player transformed from the one whose mental strength when it really mattered was often questioned.

Murray's 6-4 6-7 6-3 6-7 6-2 victory took his career record against Federer to 11-9 but despite those regular triumphs, Friday's one seemed to be the most significant.In last year's Wimbledon final, Murray also dominated before bowing to the old master in a tearful defeat and while he did gain revenge by winning their Olympic gold medal duel a few weeks later, real bragging rights are earned at Grand Slams.

"To lose them was tough," Murray said of Friday's two tiebreaks. "I was just happy with the way I responded after both those sets.

"I've lost some tough matches against him in Slams. I'm sure both of us will play each other again in Slams, so it will help having won once against him."

With Lendl in his corner, Murray is now the real deal. Gone are the sloppy service games, the passive returns and cagey counter-attack tennis that were once his trademark.

Murray has released the beast, fights fire with fire and is ferociously protective of his territory.

While he was a few years behind Djokovic in his "big-match" development, last year's U.S. Open triumph over the world number one Serb was proof that he has caught up and on Sunday they will walk out on court as equals.

Boris Becker: my money is on Andy Murray to win Australian Open final against Novak Djokovic

I believe more strongly than ever that Andy Murray can be a multiple grand slam champion.

The most significant change in the entire men’s game over the past 18 months has been Murray’s improvement and development, as we saw in his brilliant Australian Open semi-final victory over Roger Federer on Friday.

This is why I predict he will win his final in Melbourne against Novak Djokovic on Sunday.

I expect it to be a similar type of match to the US Open final, a nail-biter over four or five sets, but deep down he knows he has what it takes to beat the defending champion.

The margins are narrow: I would rate Murray’s chances as 51 to 49 in his favour. But you can tell that he is operating on a different level to previous years, and that working with Ivan Lendl has made the critical difference.

At 25, he is the same age as Djokovic – there are only seven days separating them – and my guess is that these two boys will win lots of grand slam trophies between them over the next three years.

Murray is a changed man since the London Olympics. He is a different personality on court having beaten Roger Federer in straight sets at Wimbledon to win the gold medal, which has finally unlocked his self-belief.

Losing in those four slam finals must have seriously demoralised him, but he has come through it now. Winning a slam is such a wonderful feeling, and he wants to experience it again.

He knows that the window for adding more slams to his collection is the present, not three or four years’ time. He is desperate to seize his moment.

Physically, Murray and Djokovic are very evenly matched. The way that Djokovic moves on a hard court is mind-boggling: he defines what you can and cannot do by his sliding, and by the strain he puts on his legs just trying to reach the ball.

But Murray’s mental approach to the game now, and the way he prepares tactically, could be the decisive factor. He has won his first grand slam, so the confidence is there for him to know and to understand at the deepest level that he is good enough to win another slam or more.

Murray was always extremely fit, but the weakness in his early years on tour was his endurance: he was constantly cramping in the long five-set matches.

With his different training habits, and his off-season winter sessions in Miami, he has made incredible progress in this area. Now it seems that the longer the match goes, the better it is for Murray.

The complication on Sunday is that the more of a marathon it is, the better it becomes for Djokovic, too. There is a clear reason why these two are at the top of the men’s game.

In terms of rankings, Murray might still be third behind Federer, but I have been predicting since last summer that these two would be dominating men’s tennis for the next 2½ years at least. That is exactly what is happening.

Djokovic is very popular with the Australian crowd: after all, he has won here three times before and is coming off a sequence of 20 straight victories.

He was part of one of the best matches of all time in last year’s final against Rafael Nadal, so he is full of confidence – the king of Melbourne, if you like. But there is one guy he still does not like to play, and he is called Murray.

For Murray, that first slam success in New York, which he achieved against Djokovic in a fantastic five-setter, gives him an important feelgood factor. Be in no doubt that it will have an effect on this final.

While Djokovic had that incredible five-hour match against Stanislas Wawrinka in the fourth round, he recovered very impressively in his wins over Tomas Berdych and David Ferrer, and sometimes you need that type of five-setter to get yourself going in a grand slam.

From Murray’s point of view, it is not an issue that no man has ever won his second slam title in the tournament directly after his first. He has been in so many finals and semi-finals that he is not the new kid on the block any more. He suffered in this type of environment for many years, which is why he broke through.

Murray knew that, eventually, all those years of frustration would be over. He will be ready for this showdown, but he has to make sure that he controls the centre of the court. If he lets Djokovic dictate, he will be doing a lot of running and he will probably lose.

The moment he becomes passive is the moment his opponent grows stronger. We saw how, when he was serving for the match against Federer, he became a little passive. It is still a flaw in his armoury and he cannot afford for it to show against Djokovic.

But Murray will not need any reminding that he is playing against the world No 1, a five-time grand slam champion. Crucially, he also knows that he is playing the same man whom he beat in his last major final.

James Lawton: Federer rages at the dying of the light as his old mystique is stripped away

Murray made him appear not only ageing and tired but edgy and querulous, someone ready to pick an argument with anyone

If it really is the end of Roger Federer as the most brilliant and resilient figure in the history of tennis we cannot say with absolute certainty that it is Andy Murray who has shown him the door.

Not yet, not with any decent respect for achievements so sublime and so relentless they are never likely to be surpassed, because we should remember this assertion was made on behalf of Rafael Nadal as long ago as four and a half years when he beat the great man on Wimbledon's Centre Court in a final some hard judges said could never be bettered.

That claim was violently premature, as Federer established exquisitely with five more Grand Slam titles, but in Melbourne today Murray did rather more than the currently disabled Spaniard.

He not only beat Federer, he announced that he had moved, finally, into a clearly superior category, younger, faster, stronger and capable of playing some quite astonishing shots. Six years, and 16 Grand Slam titles his junior, he did something to Federer that could not be obscured by the running time of four hours, and five sets, of their Australian Open semi-final. He took away more than Federer's hopes of maybe one last big-time duel with the ferociously in-form Novak Djokovic.

He stripped down massive amounts of both his mystique and his competitive charm.

He made Federer look mortal in some ways that we had rarely if ever seen before. He made him appear not only ageing and tired but edgy and querulous, someone ready to pick an argument with anyone, himself, an umpire, a line judge, maybe even the world, and this wasn't Federer. It used to be Murray but we only had a flash or two of that gesticulating destroyer of his own best hopes.

Murray consigned the distraught figure to a part of the past of this place where he was so curtly dismissed in three sets by first Federer, then Djokovic in the finals of 2010 and 2011. After the first debacle, Federer was kind enough, saying that Murray undoubtedly had the talent to one day win a major. A year on, though, the prediction seemed like a parody of reality when Djokovic picked Murray apart. It was a mis-match of grotesque proportions and much of it saw Murray raging at his entourage, the roof and not least himself.

Now such emotion was without a hint of encouragement in the stony countenance of his coach Ivan Lendl. Once again there was a mountain of evidence that the former Gland Slam winner, a man whose only serious ache is that he never carried off Wimbledon, has made not so much a new player as a new man out of Murray.

This one not only exudes power and imposing fitness but a level of self-belief that pre-Lendl was quite unimaginable. This new creation doesn't unravel at the first passing mishap. This one produces stunning strength at a place which in the past would have been broken.

Whenever he slipped against Federer today his first instinct was not to panic but re-make himself. He did it with a series of shots that were both lacerating and fearless.

For Federer it was to be in the eye of a prophecy he made so cheerily in the once familiar rush of triumph.

Now he was ransacking the last of his ability to win tie-breaks in the second and fourth sets, his sixth and seventh out of eight against Murray, but if this made the pulses of his most devoted followers race once more, his opponent coldly returned to the business of dominating a man he had never before beaten in a Grand Slam event.

Swift revenge for Federer's Wimbledon triumph last summer came in the Olympic final, but if a gold medal is something to treasure, it is not the same as beating the champion of champions in one of the four tournaments that matter most.

Nor does it compare with gaining the right to face down the rampaging Djokovic in your sixth Grand Slam final.

Murray beautifully defined the nature of the contest which tomorrow seems certain to rivet the tennis world as profoundly as that unforgettable Federer-Nadal collision in 2008.

That duel was about a haunting balance between the power of the young Majorcan and the most subtle Swiss. It made for rallies which carried the match from one crescendo to another and then just before the climax it brought a backhand down the line from Federer which some still swear was the best, the most nerveless shot they have ever seen.

What Murray now anticipates is an altogether different contest, one of withering forehands and the most brutally administered backhands and the kind of devouring movement guaranteed to drain the life out of all but the most resolute fighter. Murray said, "I hope it is a painful match as this will mean it is a good one."

Good one? It has the destructive potential of something like the dispute at the OK Corral.

Murray did not seem overly impressed when the old champion Jim Courier suggested it was probably a good thing he had not seen too much of Djokovic's evisceration of the normally obdurate Spaniard David Ferrer in the other semi-final.

The implication was that the man from Dunblane might just have suffered a sharp attack of intimidation. It did not seem so likely, not in the wake of Murray's absorption of the best Federer could conjure and his frequently savage response.

Shortly before Federer's last stand in the second tie-break, which astonishingly he won with the loss of just two points, the Swiss master greeted a Murray passing shot with what seemed to be an expletive. There was a suggestion that he was complaining about an element of gamesmanship in the delivery of the Scot's serve but Murray's reaction could hardly have been more imperious. "Whatever," he snarled as he returned to the baseline with another point – and another reason to believe that his progress to the showdown with Djokovic had become a formality.

It was one which would have still a scattering of some remnants from the best of Federer's past but not nearly enough, it had become utterly clear, to dress up an illusion that he was about anything more than saving a little face.

The Murray who collected his first major in New York last September, after running through a broken Djokovic in the final set, had rarely shown more touch or resolution.

When Federer performed his latest tie-break ambush it was maybe forgivable to speculate that he might once again be contemplating still more defiance of the dying of the old light. Certainly there was encouragement in the set of his jaw-line and the pumping of his fist. Unfortunately for him, Murray had never been less susceptible to the aura of a great man.

Murray's body language could hardly have been more eloquent as he raced through the final set like a man briskly recovering lost belongings. Whenever Federer convinced himself that there might still be a chance, when he attempted to lock into the fact that he remained just one break of service away from what would have been astounding parity, Murray felt obliged to set the record straight.

He produced overwhelming conviction and a brutal virtuosity. A second service which had briefly become a neon-lit embarrassment was placed in the margins of an irresistible charge to the finish line. His total of aces reached 21. His belief that he would meet Djokovic soared.

His objective was not so much to usher Federer down the high road of sports history. That was merely the by-product of his belief that he was indeed the right man to stand in the path of the world's best player. He said he looked forward to the final of pain. The diagnosis must be one of competitive bliss.

MELBOURNE—At around 7:15 P.M. Friday, a few minutes before Roger Federer followed Andy Murray down from the locker room and onto the court, it looked like Rod Laver Arena had been been given an upgrade. Compared to earlier evenings here, the light was more atmospheric, the temperature was more comfortable, the crowd was better looking, the clothes were sharper, the VIPs were actually famous. Greg Norman was here, and the stadium's namesake sat in the front row with a full complement of legends surrounding him. A few rows back was the obligatory celebrity tennis fanatic. This time, though, it wasn’t Anna Wintour or Gavin Rossdale or the Prince of Wales who had jetted in to pay homage to the Maestro. It was American actor Kevin Spacey, who is a....Murray fan? Here was a sign, if anyone needed it, that the guard was changing in men’s tennis, right? The groupies are always the first to know.

Well I don't like Boris Becker but I could give him a as the only pundit who is calling for Andy it seems. And Iona love the bit about Spacey. I'll never forget what he said after USO as he spoke for so many of us I think - 'I've never wanted something so much for someone else as I wanted Andy to win' or words to that effect

AS there is only a few hours now until my Australian Open final against Novak Djokovic, I thought I’d share a few insights into my preparation for the match and what I learnt from my two big matches against him last year, the first in a semi-final in Melbourne and the other one, obviously, in New York.

But first a memory from the US Open final last September that might give some of you a bit of a laugh. It’s something only the eagle-eyed might have noticed and when I look back now, I still shake my head but given the result, all is well that ends well.

When I was serving for the US title against Novak and leading 30-0, I was deep in the zone, thinking about where to put my first serve, hoping I’d get a free point out of Novak, that’s something that doesn’t happen very often. Decision made, I walked up to the baseline, bounced the ball and … realised I was about to serve to the wrong side of the court, this at the biggest moment of my career. You’d think I’d have known better after 20 years or so of playing! It actually had nothing to do with nerves, even though I was serving for my first grand slam title. As I said at the time, because I had built it up so much in my head, thought so much about being in the position to win a slam, I didn’t actually feel that nervous!

I just think it is all to do with being so much in the zone and while I haven’t done it too much, I watch a lot of matches and it does happen to other players. I was watching Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in his match against Roger a few nights before our semi-final and he went to walk to the chair when it was only 2-all. It’s very weird!

Now to what I hope will be a good omen for tonight’s final against Novak. If any of you watched either the US Open final or my semi-final against Roger the other night, you may have noticed a familiar face in the stands. A few actors, like Will Ferrell, are really big tennis fans and it turns out that Kevin Spacey is another. He must be, given this Tweet from the other night – “Congrats @Andy_Murray for his win! Can’t wait for Sunday night – Flew to Melbourne to watch. Awesome game!”. Kevin starred in one of my favourite films of all time, The Usual Suspects, where he played the criminal mastermind Keyser Soze.

Now to the final. Since my win over Roger on Friday night, I have focused all my energy on preparing for the final. It was great to beat Roger for the first time in a grand slam but knowing the job wasn’t complete, I headed straight to an ice bath before completing my media obligations. I didn’t leave Melbourne Park till about 2am, so it was a late night.

The plan yesterday was to sleep for as long as possible before going about further recovery. On waking up, I had a full breakfast, toast, a fruit platter, some yoghurt and then headed to the pool for a swim and a massage to loosen up the body. It doesn’t matter how fit you are, after a match like the one I had with Roger, you are going to wake up a little sore. But that’s why I’ve got my great team here.

Lunch was dinner and rice then a little more stretching and massage, but mostly I tried not to expend too much energy. I had a very light practice, only about 30 minutes or so, later in the day before dinner and then to stay up as long as I could last night. Because the final is played at night, you don’t want to go to bed early otherwise your body clock will be slowing down right at key moments in the final. Before going to the courts today, I’ll have another proper breakfast and lunch to keep the body fuelled, with my last meal about 90 minutes before we go on to the court.

I’m really looking forward to the final. My results over the last year show I’ve played my best tennis in the big matches, the slam finals and the Olympics. It doesn’t mean you are going to win every time but there is not much more you can do than that.

The thing that changes from winning big matches is that you have that extra bit of belief when you go out on the court. I think the thing with Roger and Rafa and then Novak over the past five or six years is that they have kept setting the bar at new levels and it has been up to the rest to catch up and I think I have done a good job with that.

Last year, when I played Novak here in a semi-final, that match was important for the rest of my career because it proved to me how close I was to breaking through if I improved a few small things.

It is obviously going to be tough and this might sound strange, but I hope am feeling in pain late on Sunday because that will mean I am right in the final. With our game styles, we play a lot of long points and have long rallies and we both return very well, so it is very tough to get free points.

Every time we played last year, it was incredibly close and very, very long matches. I wouldn’t expect anything different tonight but I’m aiming to come out on top!